Many Christians in the United States believe that it is their biblical
responsibility to support the contemporary Jewish State of Israel for
specific theological reasons (as opposed to general political ones), a
view known as Christian Zionism (基督教犹太复国主义).
The Pew Research Center put the figure at 63 percent for white
evangelicals. This view holds that the regathering of Jewish people to
Israel since 1948 is the miraculous fulfillment of God’s promises to
Abraham to establish Israel as a nation forever in Palestine. Tim
LaHaye’s Left Behind novels, together with books written by Hal Lindsey,
Pat Robertson, and many others, which propound this view, have sold well
over 100 million copies. Burgeoning Christian Zionist organizations such
as the International
Christian Embassy and
Christians United for
Israel wield immense influence on Capitol Hill, making Christian
Zionism the largest single‐issue political lobby to come from Western
Christianity. A growing number of Christians, however, are left
increasingly uneasy about the idea that God would bring the Jewish
people back to Palestine while they are in unbelief, since that was why
they were exiled from it in the first place. The methods Israel has
used, moreover, to colonize the land and subjugate the Palestinians—
many of whom are Christians—do not match the picture of a God‐fearing
Israel that Christian Zionists find in their literal interpretation of
the ancient prophecies. An alternate interpretation is that the promises
of land, like the laws of Moses, were part of the Old Covenant, which
was fulfilled in the New Covenant. These Old Covenant shadows were
realized in and through the substance of Jesus Christ and the church.
Christian Zionists’ unconditional support of the current State of Israel
would therefore be a misguided effort to separate Jews and Gentiles
again, whom God joined together in the church, the body of Christ.

“For the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely
in the hands of the Jews and gives the student of the Bible a thrill and
a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.”1
Billy Graham’s father‐in‐law, L. Nelson Bell, then editor of
Christianity Today, expressed the sentiments of millions of American
evangelicals when he described the Israeli capture of Jerusalem in 1967
as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

The roots of Christian interest in Israel can be traced to the Bible
prophecy movement in Britain and the speculations of Edward Irving and
John Nelson Darby in the early nineteenth century. The 1967 ”Six Day
War,” however, marked a significant turning point for fundamentalists
and evangelicals with such interest; it fueled among them a resurgence
of enthusiasm for Eretz Israel (“Land of Israel”), that is, a resurgence
of support for the State of Israel.2 Christians
who support the contemporary Jewish nation for theological rather than
political reasons are part of a movement, born out of the Bible prophecy
movement, that is referred to as Christian Zionism.3

In 1976, a series of events brought contemporary Christian Zionists
to the forefront of U.S. mainstream politics. Jimmy Carter was elected
president as a ”born¬again” Christian, drawing the support of the
evangelical right. The following year Menachem Begin and the right¬wing
Likud Party came to power in Israel. A tripartite coalition slowly
emerged in the United States among the political right, evangelical
Christians, and the Jewish lobby that increasingly used biblical
language to describe the condition of modern Israel. Jimmy Carter later
acknowledged how his own pro-Zionist beliefs had influenced his Middle
East policy.4 He also described how his generation was
witnessing “a return at last, to the biblical land from which the Jews
were driven so many hundreds of years ago,” the fulfillment of biblical
prophecy, stating that the establishment of the nation of Israel was the
“very essence.”5 When Carter vacillated over the
aggressive Likud settlement program and proposed the creation of a
Palestinian homeland, however, he alienated the pro-Israeli coalition,
who switched their support to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 elections.

Reagan’s legal secretary, Herb Ellingwood, one of the most fervent
believers in Eretz Israel and the imminent war of Armageddon, described
how he and Reagan often discussed the fulfillment of biblical prophecy,
according to author Grace Halsell.6

“White House seminars” became a regular feature of Reagan’s
administration, bringing leading Christian Zionists into direct personal
contact with national and congressional leaders. In 1982, for example,
Reagan invited Jerry Falwell to brief the National Security Council on
the possibility of a nuclear war with Russia.7 Two
years later, Reagan shared his personal convictions in a conversation
with Tom Dine, one of Israel’s chief lobbyists working for the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee: “I turn back to the ancient prophets in
the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find
myself wondering if…we’re the generation that is going to see that come
about. I don’t know if you’ve noted any of these prophecies lately, but
believe me, they certainly describe the times we’re going through.”8

Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton do not appear to have shared
the same theological convictions concerning Israel as their
predecessors, but George W. Bush proves to be more of an enigma. He has
not explicitly affirmed Christian Zionist beliefs and he does advocate a
two‐state solution, but his strong support of Israel and statements such
as the following, made in 2001 before a Jewish audience, are consistent
with Christian Zionist convictions: “Through centuries of struggle, Jews
across the world have been witnesses not only against the crimes of men,
but for faith in God, and God alone. Theirs is a story of defiance in
oppression and patience in tribulation—reaching back to the exodus and
their exile into the diaspora. That story continued in the founding of
the State of Israel. The story continues in the defense of the State of
Israel.”9

The Bible prophecy movement is typified as much by Tim LaHaye’s
fictional Left Behind series of novels as by John Hagee’s political
organization, Christians United for Israel. Hal Lindsey, however, is
undoubtedly the most influential Bible prophecy proponent of the
twentieth century. Time magazine described him as “the Jeremiah for this
generation,”10 and his present publisher calls him
“the father of the modern-day Bible prophecy movement”11
and the “best known prophecy teacher in the world.”12
The New York Times Book Review called Lindsey’s most famous book, The
Late Great Planet Earth, the nonfiction bestseller of the 1970s.13
The book has spawned more than 20 sequels, and approximately 40
million copies of it have been published in 54 languages.

The back cover of Lindsey’s Planet Earth 2000, for example, promises,
“Hal will be your guide on a chilling tour of the world’s future
battlefields as the Great Tribulation, foretold more than two thousand
years ago by Old and New Testament prophets, begins to unfold. You’ll
meet the world leaders who will bring man to the very edge of extinction
and examine the causes of the current global situation—what it all
means, what will shortly come to pass, and how it will all turn out.”14

Many evangelical Protestants see a connection between Israel and the
fulfillment of biblical prophecy and/or believe that God gave Israel to
the Jews in 1948. At least 60% of those with such beliefs support the
state of Israel,15 and 32% cite their religious
beliefs as the primary reason for such support.16It is my conclusion, after 10 years of
postgraduate research on the subject, that Christian Zionism is the
largest, most controversial, and most influential single‐issue political
lobby within Western Christianity today.17
As such, the foundations on which this widespread position rest are open
to examination. I propose to examine those
foundations by addressing two questions:

first, does the regathering of the
Jewish people to the contemporary State of Israel have any
theological significance in terms of the fulfillment of biblical
prophecy?;

and second, does the evidence in the
Bible suggest that it endorses or that it rejects the Zionist
ideology?18

In answer to these questions, I first will explain the relationship
between the Old and New Testaments. Then I will examine the meaning of
the Abrahamic covenant, the ethical requirements of the covenant
relationship, the concept of inheritance in the New Testament, and,
finally, the meaning of terms such as the elect and chosen people when
discussed from a Christian perspective.

Christian Zionists assume an ultraliteral hermeneutic when
interpreting Old Testament promises concerning the people of God, the
land of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple, and believe that those
promises are being fulfilled literally today. The International
Christian Embassy affirms, for example, “The modern ingathering of the
Jewish People to Eretz Israel and the rebirth of the nation of Israel
are in fulfillment of biblical prophecies.”19
Christian Zionists assume that the Old and New Testaments run parallel
into the future, the former speaking of Israel and the latter speaking
of the church; however, this is not the way the New Testament
interprets, fulfills, and completes the Old. For example, Jesus annulled
the Levitical food laws when He said, “Don’t you see that nothing that
enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go
into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body. (In
saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)” (Mark 7:18–19).20

In Acts 10, God uses a vision of unclean food specifically to help the
apostle Peter realize that in Christ there no longer is any distinction
between Jew and Gentile—God accepts both equally into His kingdom. Only
when Peter encounters Cornelius does he begin to realize the
implications of the vision for the way he should now view Jews and
Gentiles: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show
favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is
right” (Acts 10:34–35). If God does not show favoritism, neither should
we. The Jews no longer enjoy a favored or exclusive status.

The book of Hebrews explains the progressive movement of biblical
revelation more fully. The Old Testament revelation from God often came
in shadow, image, and prophecy. That revelation finds its consummation
and fulfillment in the New Covenant (i.e., Testament) in Jesus Christ.
The writer to the Hebrews, then, declares, “By calling this covenant
‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and
aging will soon disappear” (Heb. 8:13). He insists later, “The law is
only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities
themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices
repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to
worship” (Heb. 10:1).

It is essential that Christians interpret the Old Testament in the light
of the New Testament, not the other way around. Paul insists, for
example, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or
drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or
a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the
reality, however, is found in Christ” (Col. 2:16–17). The question,
therefore, is not whether the promises of the Old Testament should be
understood allegorically or literally. It is instead a question of
whether they should be understood in terms of shadow or substance.

The roots of the Abrahamic Covenant are found in Genesis 2, not in
Genesis 12, as Christians Zionists argue. The covenant began with God’s
creation of a paradise in the garden of Eden, not with His promise of
any real estate in the Middle East. In Eden, people received all of
God’s blessings and enjoyed fellowship with Him. Mankind lost the
paradise of Eden through the fall, but God promised to restore to him
the paradise of heaven through redemption.

In Genesis 12 and 15, God promises to give Abraham’s family a place
to live and indicates the extent of that place: “To your descendants I
give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the
Euphrates” (Gen. 15:18). In Genesis 17, God repeats and amplifies the
promise: “I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I
will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you
and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your
God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan,
where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to
you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God” (Gen.
17:6–8). Contrary to dispensationalists, who understand the promises God
made to Abraham concerning the land as eternal, covenantalists see them
not as an end in themselves, but as a foretaste of heaven.

The land is described later as “flowing with milk and honey” (Exod.
3:8), which points to a restored paradise in the future. From the very
beginning this Old Covenant shadow would have to wait for the New
Covenant substance (or reality) for actual fulfillment, and then not by
military conquest but by Messianic crucifixion. Conquest and residency
in the land was a temporary assignment, a test of faith, not an end in
itself. This is because the covenant always was primarily relational
(with God), not material. We see how Abraham and his descendants
understood this land promise in Hebrews 11:

For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose
architect and builder is God.…And so from this one man…came descendants
as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the
seashore. All these people were still living by faith when they died.
They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and
welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens
and strangers on earth.…Instead, they were longing for a better
country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their
God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Heb. 11:10–16)

This is how the New Testament interprets the Abrahamic Covenant. In
Hebrews, the term heavenly is used not in an allegorical or nonliteral
sense, but in just the opposite sense: the promises find their
consummation in heaven. The “Jerusalem above,” the heavenly city for
which the Old Testament patriarchs reportedly were longing, therefore,
is not the territory from Egypt to Iraq, but a relationship with the
living God. In this context, residency in Canaan was only ever intended
to be a prelude.

The land itself, further, never unconditionally belongs to Israel, but
to God. God insists that the land cannot be bought or sold permanently
or even given away permanently, let alone annexed and colonized as has
occurred since 1967. The land is never at Israel’s disposal for its
national purposes; rather, it is Israel who is at God’s disposal. God’s
people at best ultimately remain tenants in God’s land (see Lev. 25:23).

A large portion of evangelicals, nevertheless, seem preoccupied with
realizing an Old Covenant shadow and building a Jewish kingdom for
Jesus. This explains their support for the occupation and settlement of
the West Bank, their opposition to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and
their lack of sympathy concerning the Palestinian quest for autonomy.

According to Bible teacher Arnold Fruchtenbaum, for example, the
geographical extent of Eretz Israel is nonnegotiable and covers
everything from Egypt to Iraq: “At no point in Jewish history have the
Jews ever possessed all of the land from the Euphrates in the north to
the River of Egypt in the south. Since God cannot lie, these things must
yet come to pass.”21 Such reasoning ignores the way
the Old Testament writers themselves understood the promises made to
Abraham. The writer of the book of Joshua, for example, makes clear that
the covenant promise already had been fulfilled by his generation (Josh.
21:43–45).

Nehemiah, writing after the second exile, likewise looked back and
testified to the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham: “You gave
them kingdoms and nations, allotting to them even the remotest
frontiers.…You made their sons as numerous as the stars in the sky, and
you brought them into the land that you told their fathers to enter and
possess” (Neh. 9:22–23).

The right of Israel to exist as a nation is not in dispute and must
be protected; however, it is clear that the promises made to Abraham
were given in the context of a covenant relationship that was intended
to bless all peoples of the world. To insist, therefore, on an
interpretation of those promises that now gives people of Jewish origin
born in other parts of the world an exclusive title deed to much of the
Middle East in perpetuity, at the expense of the Palestinians born in
the land, many of whom are Christians, appears to run as contrary to
their Old Testament context as to their New Testament fulfillment.

The Promised Land was never an unconditional right, but always a
conditional gift. During the wilderness wanderings, God warned His
people, “If you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out
the nations that were before you” (Lev. 18:28).

Thirty‐six times in the Old Testament, God specifically warned the
Jews to be compassionate to strangers and aliens because of their own
experience in Egypt (see, e.g., Lev. 19:33–34). The prophet Ezekiel
amplified the same warning: “‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
Since you…shed blood, should you then possess the land? You rely on your
sword, you do detestable things…Should you then possess the land?…I will
make the land a desolate waste, and her proud strength will come to an
end” (Ezek. 33:25–29; see also Jer. 17:4).

On the basis of such warnings, many in Europe and the Middle East
argue that the Israeli government’s failure to comply with UN
Resolutions regarding the rights of Palestinians would suggest another
imminent exile rather than a final restoration. God stipulated through
the blessings and curses that repentance is always a condition of return
(Deut. 30:1–3).

The assertion, therefore, that the founding of the State of Israel in
1948 and the capture of Jerusalem in 1967 indicate that God is once
again blessing the Jewish people is without foundation in Scripture.
Those who believe biblical prophecy is being fulfilled literally in
contemporary Israel today must answer this question: if the promises in
Genesis are the basis of Israel’s claim to the land, what about the
commandments and prophecies throughout the Law of Moses that make it
quite clear that the Israelites’ right to the land was conditional?

If you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all
his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will
come upon you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and
cursed in the country… The LORD will cause you to be defeated before
your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from
them in seven… You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to
possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end
of the earth to the other. (Deut. 28:15-16, 25, 63-64)

In Leviticus, while the Israelites were still wandering in the
desert, the Lord uses some of the most graphic language in the Bible to
spell out the basis for their future residency in the Promised Land: “Do
not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the
nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the
land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out
its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws… And if you
defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations
that were before you” (Lev. 18:24-28).

If the Israelites’ claim to the land was conditioned on obedience,
and if they were deported from the land in the first century because of
the ultimate disobedience of rejecting their Messiah, how can it be
affirmed that they now have a right to the land when they persist in the
same disbelief and rejection of their Messiah? Furthermore, if the
predictive element of prophecy must be understood literally, so must the
prophetic demand for justice. Palestinian theologians are not alone in
seeing the present Israeli colonization of Palestine as a
twentieth‐century equivalent of Ahab’s theft of Naboth’s vineyard.22

Christian Zionists’ preoccupation with a literal fulfillment of
biblical prophecy in Israel today is most apparent regarding the status
of Jerusalem. In Galatians 4, Paul criticized the “Jerusalem-dependency”23
of the legalists who were infecting the church in Galatia. In verse 27
he cites Isaiah 54:1, which refers to the earthly Jerusalem, and applies
it to the home of all who believe in Jesus Christ. Access to heaven no
longer has anything to do with an earthly Jerusalem. Jesus made this
clear to the woman of Samaria: “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when
you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…a
time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship
the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the
Father seeks” (John 4:21–23).

Jesus explained at His trial why this is so: “My kingdom is not of
this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by
the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36). He
thus repudiated the idea that His kingdom involves the establishment of
an earthly Jewish kingdom, a mere shadow. Before the resurrection
encounters and Pentecost, the disciples seemed to share the same
understanding of the land promises as the other first-century Jews: they
looked forward to God’s decisive intervention in history that would
restore political sovereignty to the Jews within the Promised Land. This
is reflected in the words of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus,
who confessed, “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem
Israel” (Luke 24:21). It also must have been the idea in the minds of
the disciples when, before the ascension, they asked, “Lord, are you at
this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). John
Calvin comments, “There are as many mistakes in this question as there
are words.”24 Jesus redefined and expanded their
understanding of the nature of the kingdom of God and thereby the
meaning of chosenness. The expansion of the kingdom of God throughout
the world requires the permanent exile of the apostles from the land.
They are sent out into the world with one‐way tickets, and are not told
to return.

After Pentecost, the apostles begin to use Old Covenant language
concerning the land in new ways. Peter, for example, speaks of an
inheritance that, unlike the land, “can never perish, spoil or fade” (1
Pet. 1:4). Paul, likewise, asserts, “Now I commit you to God and to the
word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance
among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). The New Testament
authors insist that through faith in Christ we already inhabit the
heavenly Jerusalem and look forward to its appearing (Heb. 12:22–23).
Paul, similarly, insists, “But the Jerusalem that is above is free”
(Gal. 4:26). The limitations of the literal land, which was but a shadow
of the coming substance, and which provided a temporary home for God’s
emerging people and a geographical context for the incarnation, have
been transcended. The direction now is outward from Jerusalem,
stretching through the Great Commission to the uttermost ends of the
earth.25

Paul used the Old Testament story of Sarah and Hagar to inoculate the
Galatian believers against the infiltration of the legalistic Judaizers
(Gal 4:21–31). He compares Jerusalem, which had rejected Jesus, to Hagar
and her slave children (v. 25). He then likens the Galatian believers to
Isaac and describes them as “children of promise” (v. 28). Paul’s
critical analogy could perhaps apply to some forms of Messianic Judaism
today that require Torah obedience, as well as to the political system
in Israel which, because of proportional representation, is
metaphorically “held captive” to minority religious political parties
that are tied to orthodox Judaism (which itself is historically rooted
in, and continuous with, New Testament Pharisaism).

After Pentecost, the apostles in no sense believed that the Jewish
people still had a divine right to a kingdom centered in Jerusalem, or
that this would be an important, let alone central, aspect of God’s
future purposes for the world. In Paul’s christological thinking, God
has superseded the land, like the law, in His redemptive purposes.

Based on their literal reading of the Old Testament, Christian
Zionists believe that the Jews remain God’s “chosen people” who enjoy a
unique relationship, status, and eternal purpose within their own land,
separate from any promises made to the church. Christian Friends of
Israel, for example, insists, “The Bible teaches that Israel (people,
land, nation) has a Divinely ordained and glorious future, and that God
has neither rejected nor replaced His Jewish people.”26
Jews for Jesus likewise perpetuates the distinction between God’s
purposes for Israel and His purposes for the church—the latter being
merely a “parenthesis”27 in God’s plan for the Jews:
“We believe that Israel exists as a covenant people through whom God
continues to accomplish His purposes and that the Church is an elect
people in accordance with the New Covenant, comprising both Jews and
Gentiles who acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and Redeemer.”28

This contradicts John the Baptist’s statement: “Produce fruit in
keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have
Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can
raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the
trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down
and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:8–9). Jesus similarly insisted, “I am
the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me” (John 14:6). Jesus then used the analogy of the vine and
branches to explain the relationship between God and His people (John
15:1–6); clearly, Jesus, not Israel, is the vine; His followers, not
national Israel, are the branches of the vine. Remaining part of the
vine and bearing fruit depends on a personal relationship with Jesus,
not on heredity.

This is the reason Peter warned his hearers soon after the day of
Pentecost that if they refused to recognize Jesus as their Messiah, they
would cease to be the “people of God” (Gk. laos): “Anyone who does not
listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people” (Acts
3:23). Paul elaborates on the analogy of the vine in Romans 11:17–21 to
explain the relationship between the natural branches (Israel) and the
wild branches (Gentiles). It is significant that in the New Testament
the term chosen is never used exclusively of the Jewish people. It is
used only to refer to Jesus or the church, the body of Christ (e.g.,
Col. 3:12).

Peter also draws terms from the Old Testament that describe Israel
and applies them to the church: “But you are a chosen people, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may
declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his
wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people
of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received
mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9–10). It is, therefore, no longer appropriate to
describe the Jews as God’s “chosen people.” This term has been redefined
theologically to describe all those who trust in Jesus Christ,
irrespective of race.

This view sometimes is caricatured as supersessionism or replacement
theology, that is, the belief that the church has superseded or replaced
Israel. The New Testament does not teach that the Gentiles have
uperseded the Jews; but neither does it teach a racial exclusivity that
gives Jewish people preferential or levated status. According to Paul,
God’s intention has always been to break down the “wall of partition”
and create for Himself one new people, drawn from every race (Eph.
2:11–16).

The Bible prophecy movement, born within British evangelicalism in
the nineteenth century, reached mainstream American evangelicalism in
the twentieth century. It became institutionalized through a view known
as dispensationalism, which sees in history a succession of biblical
eras, or dispensations, that are distinguished by God’s different
methods of dealing with His people. In this view, the era of the church
is different from the coming era of a literal kingdom in which the
returning Christ reigns over Israel in the Promised Land for a thousand
years. Kenneth Cragg satirically summarizes the implications of this
ethnic exclusivity and simplistic dualism:

It is so; God chose the Jews; the land is theirs by divine gift. These
dicta cannot be questioned or resisted. They are final. Such verdicts
come infallibly from Christian biblicists for whom Israel can do no
wrong—thus fortified. But can such positivism, this unquestioning
finality, be compatible with the integrity of the Prophets themselves?
It certainly cannot square with the open peoplehood under God which is
the crux of New Testament faith. Nor can it well be reconciled with the
ethical demands central to law and election alike.29

Christian Zionism thrives on a literal and futurist hermeneutic in which
Old Testament promises made to the ancient Jewish people are transferred
to the contemporary State of Israel in anticipation of a final future
fulfillment. It ignores, marginalizes, or bypasses New Testament
passages that reinterpret, annul, or describe the fulfillment of these
promises in and through Jesus Christ.

The process of redemptive history has yielded a dramatic movement, from
shadow to substance. The land that God once constrained to the specific
place of His redemptive purpose He then expanded to the entire breadth
of the created cosmos, through the New Covenant. The exalted Christ
rules sovereign over the entire world, from the heavenly Jerusalem.30

The substance cannot give way again to shadow, for in the will and
purposes of God the shadows no longer exist. The light has come in Jesus
Christ: “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one
obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (Heb.
8:13). The choice, therefore, is between two theologies: one based on
the shadows of the Old Covenant and one based on the substance of the
New Covenant. Christian Zionism offers an exclusive theology that
focuses on the Jews in the land rather than an inclusive theology that
centers on the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. It is time to stop
fighting over the birthright, like Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau, and
start sharing the blessings.

16. The Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press, “Americansʹ Support for Israel Unchanged by Recent Hostilities,”
July 26, 2006, http://pewresearch.org/reports/?ReportID=37. For
statistics regarding American Christians who believe they have a
biblical responsibility to support Israel, see also Michael Prior,
Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry (London: Routledge,
1999), 143.

18. I am indebted to Don Wagner, Colin Chapman, and O.
P. Robertson for some of the inspiration for this article, arising from
A Theology of the Land consultation, The Levant Study Centre, Droushia,
Cyprus, June 1996.

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